


Grain of Rice

by DarkBlue



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bromance, F/M, Sirius Black & Lily Evans Potter Friendship, jily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 14:38:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15608463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkBlue/pseuds/DarkBlue
Summary: Sirius & Lily have Chinese Food and a conversation; a drabble.





	Grain of Rice

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt challenge on my tumblr, Marauders70s. 
> 
> Prompt: "This is girl talk, so leave."

**Friday, November 18 1979, Lily & James’ Apartment**

“Excellent, thank you,” Lily sighed happily, taking the plastic bags full of Chinese food.

“I did as you asked,” Sirius said, shrugging out of his coat and slinging it on the back of a kitchen chair. “I got you three entrees. And egg rolls. And wontons.”

“I’m here to feast,” said Lily, her lips pursing in the first threads of a smile.

“You know you could have gone out yourself,” Sirius pointed out. “You aren’t  _actually_  in hiding,” Sirius pointed out.

“Yet,” said Lily morosely, rifling through the plastic bags.

“Lils.”

“Look; James is out-“

“Working,” Sirius reminded her.

“I know.”

“And spying.”

“I know.”

“At the Ministry of Magic. Just like his dad.”

“Yeah, and sometimes…” Lily hesitated as she shrugged and threaded her fingers through all the bags to hoist them to the couch where they were set to pig out, table be damned.

“Yeah?” Sirius carefully didn’t look at her.

“Sometimes I think it’s good there’s a war on. That James has another reason for being there.”

“Yeah?”

“He hates it,” she said flatly. “Magical law? It’s paperwork. James hates drudgery like that. He wants to be active.”

“Yes, I know,” said Sirius dryly. “I shared a dormitory with him for seven years. He can’t sit still for five minutes.”

“I’m just glad he didn’t go through all the schooling and all the trouble and all the money to find himself stuck in a career he hates for a man he loved.”

Sirius sank into the cushions and popped open the fried rice in one hand and spicy beef in the other. Lily took his cue and began to cram an eggroll into her cheek.

“Thanks for coming over,” Lily said finally after they had been scarfing food down in companionable, disgusting silence. Lily was easily keeping pace with Sirius, who was a known voracious eater.

“Yeah, well, work hours are flexible,” Sirius grinned.

“Not you too,” sighed Lily.

“It’s just more fun to spy for the Order. I’ve got more uses for Padfoot. I only have to go into R&D three times a week. I pull long shifts, and I can leave to be free to do...other things,” he grinned cheekily, then nudged Lily with his foot. “Not like you are exempt.”

“You can write from home,” Lily said testily. 

“Yeah. Because you’re such a house hag.”

“Shut up. And you know the Order Missions I go on aren’t for spying.”

“True,” Sirius said with his mouth full. “You’re a good dueler.”

“Not as good as you.”

Sirius grinned smugly and changed the subject. “How are the wontons?”

“What wontons?”

“I got-“ Sirius stopped, seeing the angelic smile on Lily’s face. “Damn it,” he frowned. “I wanted one.”

Lily was unrepentant. “Then you should have eaten one earlier. All’s fair in love and war.”

“What?”

“Muggle-ism,” Lily shrugged.

“And how is love?” Sirius asked her shrewdly, taking another enormous bite of the beef, finishing it off, and chucking it back in the bag before popping open the dumplings. Three were already missing, and he frowned at them before he caught Lily’s grin as she sucked duck sauce off her little finger.

“What do you mean?” Lily asked cautiously, avoiding eye contact by peering into the next carton and picking up a plastic fork for the chow mein.

“You know what I mean,” Sirius said smuggling, popping a dumpling in a cheek and immediately hissing through his teeth to vent the steam. “The dirty deed. Riding the broomstick. Chasing the –“

“Stop,” Lily told him severely.

Sirius waited.

She blushed.

“It’s fine,” she lied unconvincingly.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Yeah? And how’s your sex life?” she snapped irritably.

“Excellent,” said Sirius, deftly using chopsticks to pick up and bite another dumpling in half with great relish. “Why do you think I’m so relaxed and breezy and you’re so…”

“Wound and horny?” fumed Lily.

“You said it, not me.”

Lily grimaced, and then reached for the orange chicken and white rice. Comfort food.

“It’s fine,” she said again.

“Evans,” Sirius said, elbowing her affectionately.

“That’s not my name anymore,” she frowned.

“To me it is.”

Lily opened her mouth to make a very nasty retort, but closed it, swallowing back bitter words.

Sirius looked down at her from over his shoulder and sensed the change in mood immediately. “Not so good?” he asked lightly, carefully turning his eyes back into the carton of now empty dumplings before picking up the last eggroll.

“Not so good,” Lily echoed.

They were silent for a minute, chewing.

“Is it…like…”

“Please stop.”

“I just mean, are you guys…trying?”

“Trying?”

“To have sex at all? Or just…”

“Or just,” agreed Lily.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s…you know…wrong?” Sirius finished eating, finally, and put the cartons back on the coffee table, sitting back and folding his hands comfortably, feeling soft and warm and happily fat. 

Lily folded a foot under her knee and hugged a pillow to her, hunching over it slightly as she looked somewhere in Sirius’ general direction, but neither made eye contact.

“Some of it is James,” she started hesitantly.

“Because of work?”

“Yeah. He hates the 8-5 life. Putting on suit robes. Chatting with people. All the paperwork for the older justiciars.”

“Yeah, but he’s only nineteen.”

“I know. And he knows that,” Lily said quickly. “It just…burns him out, I think. Not what he expected.”

“And his dad’s not around to make it any better,” Sirius agreed.

“Right. I know…I know he misses...” Lily couldn’t finish the sentence, only buried her face into the pillow to hide her tears.

Sirius scooted down the couch. “Lily. Lils. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” His hand was awkward, hovering, but he stroked one arm the way she might have petted Padfoot.

Lily’s parents had both died in a car crash in August.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“It’s okay,” Sirius said quietly. “It’s okay. You know me. I’m never okay. Look at my family. My parents don’t even talk about me. I might have died.”

Evidently this was the wrong thing to say, because Lily only cried harder.

“And Reggie. You know –“ Sirius was floundering now. “I know he’s gotten himself into something big. He and I barely-“

Lily threaded her fingers into her hair over her temples and held her head in the cradle of her hands, raising her streaming face to Sirius. “Tuni won’t even…won’t even…” she mumbled, struggling for words.

“They saw both your weddings,” Sirius tried to say desperately, but Lily burst into another round of sobs.

“Okay, okay,” Sirius was desperate. He really wasn’t one for these sorts of things. This was far more Remus’ purview than his own. Desperately he resumed petting Lily’s arms, and then because her arms were wrapped around the pillow, he moved his hands to her head to stroke the top of her head.

"I’m so sorry,” Lily repeated, blearily. “I’m just…prone to go off. You know.”

“I know,” said Sirius quickly.

“And James is afraid.”

“Of the war?”

“No; of hurting the baby.”

Sirius froze, his hand threaded in Lily’s hair. “What?”

“Oh Sirius,” Lily hiccupped. “I’m pregnant.”

Sirius was thunderstruck. “What? But…but how?”

“The usual way, I expect,” Lily managed to say tartly, her green eyes flashing up with humor and annoyance, red rimmed.

“Does James know?”

Lily gave him a withering look. “Oh  _no_ , we wanted  _you_  to be the first to know.”

“Shut up,” said Sirius, and then looked at the mess. “Oh,” he said, with blinking clarity. “You were hungry.”

“I know I shouldn’t hide behind ‘eating for two’ when it’s only the size of one grain of that rice, but-“

“No, no, it’s good,” and Sirius realized his own eyes were tearing up, and he was grinning like a fool.

“Really?” asked Lily, her face breaking into a relieved smile that clearly told Sirius far more than words the kind of guilt Lily had been carrying. She wiped her eyes with the inside of her forearm, trying to stay calm regardless of the tears and grief and anger and guilt and happiness and  _hormones_  flooding her system.

The smile faded slightly, her eyes beginning to stream without her seeming to notice. “But…but my parents,” she began quietly. “They’ll never…”

“It’s okay,” said Sirius, and he wondered why he kept saying that, because of course it wasn’t. 

He changed tacks: “Remus and I will look after it. And we’ll be good uncles, we promise.”

Lily snickered even as she wiped her nose with the heel of her hand, grimaced, and then wiped the boogers on Sirius’ jeans, who yelped and pretended to be horrified as Lily got paper towels. He pushed her arm, and she tickled his ribs, and they were laughing and shrieking just as James apparated in early from work.

“Hey!” he said, immediately throwing down a briefcase and ripping off his robes to join the fray. “Let me!”

He waded into the couch and planted himself between them, trying to tickle back.

“Stop,” Sirius said, in a mock-whining voice.

“Yes, this is girl talk, so leave,” huffed Lily.

“Girl talk?” scoffed James, tilting the food cartons towards himself in hope of finding leftovers. There was a bit of chow mein left, and he snagged it up happily. “You have to be braiding hair for girl talk.”

“Sirius was about to braid my hair,” Lily said haughtily.

“ _Really_ ,” said James, grinning. “Go on then.”

“What?”

“Braid her hair.”

“ _You_  braid it.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“My hands are too tired from holding a quill,” James joked lightly, but both his friends knew him too well not to hear the pent-up frustration.

“I told Sirius,” Lily said abruptly, to draw James out of his quickly spiraling mood.

James looked up, surprised. “Already? So soon?”

“Right,” Sirius said, blinking. “How far…I mean… how…”

“Not long,” Lily said. “We’ve only known a few days.”

“Oh,” said Sirius, flushing a bit. He hadn’t expected – even with Prongs taking him in, even with Prongs as his best friend in the world – to be so welcomed into their lives.

“Yeah, and we wanted to ask you something,” James said, also catching the unusually serious mood.

“Yeah?” Sirius asked, casual.

“We wanted you for the godfather,” continued James.

Sirius was floored. “What?”

“In case anything happens to us,” added Lily.

“Come off it,” said Sirius weakly. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”

“Like nothing happened to my parents?” said Lily sharply.

“Or mine,” said James unhappily.

Her hand snaked forward on the couch, and his turned up without thinking. Neither had to look down to connect, to thread fingers, to hold hands tightly in mutual abject terror and grief and joy.

“And we know you’d look after it,” said James simply, his brown eyes unusually serious behind his glasses.

Sirius did not look away, though usually it was awkward to maintain eye contact, even with James, who was much cannier than he let on. He nodded. “I would,” he said hoarsely, his voice scratchy with the emotion in it.

“And it’s a war on,” said Lily, looking out the window to the dazzling cold November day outside. “You never know.”

“We’ve got a lot ahead of us,” agreed James, but he was looking at her.

They both smiled at each other, and looked at Sirius, who was looking at their hands. He reached out, half-jokingly, to place his hand on the pile, like James did for quidditch practice.

“Deal,” he promised.


End file.
